UDFS – Communication/Training Team Minutes

December 16, 2002

In attendance: Paul Anderson, Peggy Bottorff, Michelle Broadway, Julie Burton, Chris Cook, Al Fanjoy, Bill Fitzpatrick, Steve Grasson, Lisa Huber, Ginger Knutsen. Ellen Lepine, Tim Miller, Dee Smith, Linda Somers, Amy Taylor, Andrew Viehman (Crestone)

Minutes this time: Al Fanjoy

Minutes next time: Steve Grasson

GENERAL MEETING MINUTES:

Next Meeting: January 6

NO MEETING on December 23

Labor Allocation Module (LAM)

Expected (but not by July 1) to handle encumbrance tracking again, and more flexibly than before PeopleSoft-HR. Entries will allow for any start/end dates and changeable distribution among funding sources.

Four COMM Team members will attend a meeting of LAM developers on Jan. 13 and offer input into the initial design from their own perspective as users:

Tim Miller, Dave McCarren, Julie Burton & Linda Somers (in addition to Peggy and Ellen who already attend those meetings regularly).

HR-PeopleSoft upgrade & BTA

Even though the HR system will be upgraded by Budget Turnaround, and within that system the new Chart of Accounts will be in place, it is expected that the business of BTA will still be conducted in the old account structure and nomenclature. HRSA feels this will be less confusing to end users, and make for fewer errors, even though it means their staff will have to perform translations from old to new system during input transactions.

FIDEV access

While we expected that all COMM team members would have access to this system by about now, it has been delayed by data corruption and performance issues. Performance is substantially worse when accessed from Hullihen than anywhere else. When access is granted, it will probably be to one of two instances of the application with real UD data being added to each gradually. One instance will be only for the Reporting Team's use; the other for all other testers/trainers. That second instance will be occasionally overwritten by the first, so we should not expect saved queries to be preserved for any length of time.

Training Plan

Rick McCauley will meet on January 8 with Peggy and Ellen to make his suggestions as to training plan priorities.

Revisiting the "Training Options" list and priorities, we continued discussion of general approaches to training, we reordered some of the items recognizing dependencies on pre-written reports and applications not yet available, and we itemized a category of "Readiness Training" topics that could be covered even absent any UD data/forms/transaction processing.

• Concrete vs. abstract: It would be ideal to start by teaching tasks that many users will have to perform (eg. JV, PO, running standardized reports written centrally), then work up in complexity for the fewer and fewer users who will want/need to go further. Those universal concrete tasks will not be ready for a while, though. We could begin to teach the abstract techniques of querying data unrelated to real UD data, but most of the team felt that would be counterproductive; that users would be confused, discouraged, or at least uninterested in learning query tools in a data vacuum.
• How high to aim the range of training: There are some number of users who in order to continue the level of data access they already depend upon will need to query multiple records, make logical joins, and interface results with non-PeopleSoft data. Training will have to be developed to that degree even if the number of staff who learn it are only counted in the tens instead of hundreds.
• How high to "let" or "make" users train: This will be at the discretion of each supervisor, but the expectation should probably include
• No dependence on old printed reports being sent automatically July 1.
• Comfort level on the part of supervisors and staff that business will not be interrupted or information acquisition be diminished on July 1
• General increase of the quality of data and the range of people's ability to ask/answer their own financial questions soon after July 1.
• Data Familiarity as prerequisite for successful training: We reinforced the expectation for some form of data dictionary describing most significant records (tables), and hope for "cheat-sheets" or lookup facilities for common data values in their fields. Parallels were drawn to Data Warehouse training, in which users who went into the training already familiar with the kind of data stored there profited much more than those who were learning both data and software at the same time.
• Balance Self-training vs Time/Effort by CommTeam & Tier-1: Centrally developed training aids should not require lessons to be delivered by the Comm Team or Tier-1 users. Those training leaders should be familiar with the training aids, having been the first to develop & use them. We should be able to direct less intensive users to the ones that will do them the most good in the best order. We should expect to help them if they get stuck, propose exercises and point out pitfalls as they pertain to the data in our departments that we know best. In the most introductory phases we might deliver lessons, but would not expect that to be the normal pattern for continued user training.
• Readiness Training: Topics around which we could start to develop demonstrations, lessons, training aids even before much progress is make on migrating UD data to FIDEV or the writing or transactions or central reports include:
• COA data elements and the records that will contain them (this latter information is not nailed down yet, as views will be developed to make the most useful info easily accessible).
• The look and feel of general PSoft 8.4 screens, navigation & help. (note that if we use the PSoft navigation tutorial we will have to be prepared with statements as to why the adjacent PSoft courses are considered too expensive for their potential helpfulness).
• PeopleBooks (again preparing statements as to which browsers are and are not compatible with viewing them).
• Elaborate on the Phased Conversion: which forms & transactions will use new system nomenclature by July 1 and which ones will be conducted using the old account-object-line codes. Explain that the several PeopleSoft modules (HR, Financials, Grants,...) are not one monolithic system but that each contains certain data that it makes available through the others.
• Format of first training efforts: Contingent on Rick's suggestions we may at the next meeting try to develop an overall outline for "Readiness Training"; then divide that outline among ourselves, each to further develop some parts of it by one or two meetings thereafter.